The younger generation . . . the guy that’s in a Rock Band, the gal that wears designer jeans . . . are NOT religious and do not practice Islam.

I agree but Islam still rules the nation.

That’s true, but they’re Shias, and that it is a critical component to their calculus I think most overlook here.

The Iranians are aware of their geopolitical position; they’re outnumbered by their counterpart Sunnis, both in population, and in number of countries in the region.

They want to win their war with the Sunnis, not just trade blows with Israel. At best, fighting Israel for them is about establishing legitimacy & protecting their spheres of influence; doing things the Sunni powers can’t or won’t.

They can’t justify, even within their own ideology, throwing a nuke at Israel, only for they themselves to be destroyed by other powers as a consequence. Allah will not stand for them to kill one enemy, only to then lose a war in his name.

And it would likely be a loss for all time, because Iran is the only Shia republic; Iraq isn’t fully converted, and Azerbaijan is outwardly secular. No one else can or will rally the Shias. They’ll simply be left kowtowing to the Sunnis for all time.

A Republic?? No, no, no, an Islamic Republic, with their joke elections and their joke secular leaders orchestrated by the Ayatollah. The Shias are just waiting for the 12th Imam to appear who will arrive sometime before during or after Armageddon (depending who you ask). The Sunni extremists just want to conquer the world, the Shia extremists want to end it. They may not have the support of the majority of the country but they have all the guns.

A Republic?? No, no, no, an Islamic Republic, with their joke elections and their joke secular leaders orchestrated by the Ayatollah. The Shias are just waiting for the 12th Imam to appear who will arrive sometime before during or after Armageddon (depending who you ask). The Sunni extremists just want to conquer the world, the Shia extremists want to end it.

The explicit ideology of the Ayatollahs, is a Marxist-like Revolution, with Islam at its core instead of Marx.

They want to spread their ideas; that doesn’t happen if they fight a war where they and Israel off each other. Their back and forth is similar to China and India, only with more violence, as the Syrian debacles allows for more open proxy-conflict.

Shias are outnumbered; bringing on Nuclear conflict does nothing to help them, or their cause.
Equally, they still live with the scars of the Iraq-Iran war; they consider themselves better than their Iraqi counterparts, because they didn’t answer with same treatment in kind.

Hence, the Fatwa they made against nuclear weapons, and statements that followed like this:

“The Americans say they stopped Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. They know it’s not true. We had a fatwa (religious ruling), declaring nuclear weapons to be religiously forbidden under Islamic law. It had nothing to do with the nuclear talks”

We know what they want, we know for a fact that they don’t want to lose, we know why they reject Nuclear weapons, while still putting on airs and token efforts of pursuing it.

The mullahs are not ISIS, they’re not a Death Cult, they’re Marxist-styled Islamic revolutionaries who want to spread that revolution.

Which they can’t do, if they get a nuke, that takes away their only advantages in their Cold War with the Arabs, and gets us directly involved.

Want a better idea of what the Iranians are up to or what their individual factions are thinking? Go listen to Shirvan Neftchi – Caspian Report. He’s from Azerbaijan (right next to Iran) which has a highly Persian-ized culture, is a Shia Muslim himself, he works in the Foreign Ministry there and receives intel reports generated both by his own, and other countries.

BS. They’ve been “advocating” to acquire a nuclear weapon and its delivery system. Have you been asleep since 1980? If they had one, do you doubt for a second that they’d USE it–either against Israel or against US? I don’t…and neither does ANYONE who understands fundamental Islamicism. There were Iranian scientists present at EVERY NoKo nuclear test. That isn’t by ACCIDENT.

BS. They’ve been “advocating” to acquire a nuclear weapon and its delivery system. Have you been asleep since 1980?

Dave, the Nuclear program is something the Shah instigated, and the first thing the mullahs did when they came to power was cancel it.

They didn’t restart it, until 5 years later.

If they had one, do you doubt for a second that they’d USE it–either against Israel or against US?

If they wanted a nuke, they would already have one.

They stop themselves short, because they just want a negotiation chip with us; a smokescreen so they can continue their clandestine operations in the middle east & elsewhere.

In short Dave the nuclear narrative, does not give them enough credit. They do think in terms of Geopolitics, and the entire Nuclear issue is something they’d only pursue, if conventional means were no longer open to them.

But conventionally, right now, they’re winning, while a nuke would even the playing field. And they don’t want that. As things stand, they’re in a war they can win, with nukes, they won’t.

Nonsense. Do you ACTUALLY believe that a total of 100,000,000 Shias can defeat–by conventional means–1.2 BILLION Muslims of other stripes? They CAN, by nuking a lot of their opponents off the globe. They can’t by supporting terrorists, which the rest of the WORLD condemns.

Nonsense. Do you ACTUALLY believe that a total of 100,000,000 Shias can defeat–by conventional means–1.2 BILLION Muslims of other stripes?

They’re winning in Syria, they’re winning in Yemen, they’re winning in Lebanon, and Iraq who was once Saudia Arabia’s shield, is now all but Iran’s puppet.

It’s not about numbers, it’s about quality. The Persians are better fighters, and make more out of their equipment, even when the Arabs in theory are better equipped.

The Persians are also used to the manipulation game, because they have to do it within their own borders (Persians are only 49% of the Iranian population, the rest are minorities.) They’re like mini-Russians in that respect.